Sad and Sexting

I am sitting at my desk writing a college essay when Pegasus messages me asking for a nude. I started an essay writing service two years ago under the name EasyWriter99. Today I am typing an essay for Kaylee, a freshman at NYU. She has to write a paper about the pre-Raphaelites for her art history class. I finish the sentence about John Everett Millais and the mix of criticism and praise he received for his painting Ophelia. I click to the Google images tab and stare at the photo of Lizzie Siddal posing as Ophelia. She is floating lifeless, her bony fingers loosely clutching a garland of flowers. I long to be her. I often picture her, or women like her, when I am sexting with Pegasus.

I don’t know his real name. We met on a kink app. He sends lines like will you really do whatever I say? or I want to tie you up and watch you struggle. I find it all quite funny and interesting and yes, it turns me on. He sends me another message: I’m waiting... I pull off my shirt. I feel raw and strange sitting at my desk in the harsh afternoon light half-nude. I take a picture of my tits and send it to him. I still don’t know how to take flattering nudes, or what constitutes a flattering nude. I guess one that is free of stomach rolls, one with soft, gold-y lighting. One where you can’t see dirty laundry balled up in the corner. I showed a friend my nudes once and she said I take nudes like a guy.

I think about the ones Pegasus sends me. I don’t masturbate every time he sends me a picture even though I tell him I do. He likes to send ones where he is putting his dick next to something for scale. I like this because it gives me information about him other than his dick size. For example, I know that he uses Dove Men 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner. The water bottles he keeps in his fridge are Poland Spring. I know he eats cucumbers. And I know that his dick is in fact quite large. I guess what I like most about feeling dominated is feeling desired. Desired to the point of wanting to ruin me. Pegasus says he wants me like this. So did my ex. When Pegasus sends me ideas of what we could do in bed I immediately think about sending them to my ex. I want to ask him if he would like to try these ideas out as well. Then I remember we aren’t together and I get depressed.

Pegasus and I sometimes break out of character and have normal conversations. He talks about his job as a light technician and I talk about the essays I’m writing. One time I told him about a light installation I saw at the New Museum called Untitled (Still Not over You). The artist's name was Iris Touliatou. The installation consisted of several long fluorescent bulbs arranged in a rectangle. They would flicker and pop and go dead at random. And then, out of nowhere, turn back on, brighter than before. Pegasus asked did it make you think of your ex? I said yes. Pegasus asks about my ex a lot, but not in a jealous way. He asks out of care. Pegasus says cheesy yet comforting things like you’ll love again, even if that feels really far away right now. I say thank you and that, even though it sounds dramatic, I don’t believe I will. He says that I’m a little too emo for him sometimes.

I gather my hair into a ponytail, the ends scraping my back. I type a little more about Millais and then shut my laptop. I don’t have any plans for the day. A free day used to excite me but now it just makes me nervous. My mouth gets dry at the thought of all the things I could do. I could go to a museum but I did that two days ago and remember feeling nauseous and like my head was going to roll off my neck. I could walk around a park but the closest one to me is Maria Hernandez, a grimy plot of grass with various railings and benches in the center that skaters flock to. Pegasus said he likes to skate there so I make a point of never going. I could train to Central Park but that would take forty-five minutes and the last time I was on the train that long I had a panic attack. New York is not a good place to be when you are heartbroken.

I bring my knees to my chest and type my ex’s name into the search bar of my contact list. I click on his name. I write out I miss you and then quickly delete it. I write how are you? but somehow that sounds even worse. We haven’t spoken since we broke up a month ago. Pegasus says that is weird. He says he started texting with his ex again two weeks after breaking up. I ask him if they got back together and he says no. He asks if I want to get back together with mine. I say I don’t trust myself and therefore I don’t really know what I want. I know what you want he replies, and then sends another photo of his dick.

After typing and deleting many messages to my ex, I decide to go shopping. Consuming things is the only way I get a hit of dopamine these days. I walk around the Burlington Coat Factory listening to “Can’t Nobody Love You” by The Zombies, one of my ex and I’s love songs. I pass racks of bright neon bathing suits and shelves of perfume gift sets and tea candles. The dust and glaring white tile floors get to me pretty quick so I leave. I stand behind a woman on the escalator who has long camel-colored curls. She is very beautiful. I think about my ex touching her hair. The thought doesn’t make me angry or jealous, just horrifically sad. I realize this is my problem, how uncomfortable I am with feeling anger. Anger would be so much easier.

Walking down 14th street I catch my reflection in a shop window. I look myself up and down, slowly, the way a man on the street would. My hair is limp, my eyes big. I look like a child in their father’s clothing, swimming in my trench coat. Pegasus says he likes that I’m petite but in a full way. I wish I could see that. I usually feel too fat or too thin. Today I look at myself and see someone that could be swallowed whole or snapped in half. I think about the time my ex and I fucked in a bar bathroom. I was bent over, clutching the faucets, my hip bones painfully crashing into the lip of the sink. I tried not to look at myself in the mirror, but instead at him. His eyebrows were stitched together. He was smiling at my lower back, getting off on his power over me. I feel myself start to grin thinking about it.

I walk over to The Strand Bookstore, hoping I will find something to buy so I can satiate myself. After flipping through the used shelf I find a book called Forbidden Erotica. I snap some pics and send them to Pegasus. Many of the photos are from the 1800s. There are men with hair gelled down to their skull, their dicks engorged. Women with hairy pussies and meaty thighs and high stockings. There is so much to love about these people. I consider stealing it but slide it back onto the shelf instead.

My phone pings. It’s from Pegasus, of course. He sends the water spray emoji in reply to the 1800’s porn. Before I have time to reply he sends another message: What do you want to do with your life? I am taken aback by this and a little offended. I don’t like that he has dismissed the bodacious and lusty 1800s people to talk about my aspirations. I ask him why he is asking. He says I worry about you. All you seem to do is talk about your ex and send me shit like this. He starts to type again, then stops.

You really shouldn’t worry about me, I’m only self-pitying when I talk to you.

Well I do worry about you, WinonaRider. That’s my profile name, which he never calls me by, so I often forget what it is and feel completely dumb when I am reminded of it.

Come on, what do you want to do with your life? What are your goals?

You sound like my dad.

You know you can call me daddy if you want.

I think about his question and I hate myself for thinking: I want to be in love. That’s what I want to do with my life. My ex’s voice trails across my mind—you have my heart, you have my heart, you have my heart. He loved to say this. And I loved having it. I type my message out quickly and send it without reading it over.

Daddy, I want to be yours. That’s all I want.

Okay that’s hot but you’re deflecting.

You started it.

I close out of the app, annoyed with Pegasus for the first time. I take the M train back to Brooklyn, watch the skyline tip into view as the train rattles over the Manhattan Bridge. The sun is already beginning to set.

When I arrive home I am disappointed that I still feel the same way I did when I left. I look out my window at the bare trees. They look like cradles holding nothing. I start to cry. I think about the affirmation this blonde yogi woman I follow on Instagram often posts: Since things are always working out for me, there must be value in this. I want to scream. A string of messages from Pegasus comes through.

Hey, I think we should stop doing this.

You’re going through a phase where you don’t know what you want.

And tbh I want to actually fuck you in person and if we did that I have a feeling you’d be a basket case.

Anyway, it’s been fun.

I feel heat start to travel up my neck. Up until this point, nothing he said had actually felt degrading. But this does. There is a slight tremble in my hands as I type, which makes me feel more humiliated.

Well, maybe when I’m in a better headspace, we could meet up?

No, I don’t think we will be meeting up actually.

When you come out of this, you’ll have interest in meeting someone else and that’s normal.

It sucks, because I find you to be very attractive. But that’s usually how it goes.

My fingers hover above the keyboard, unsure of how to end this. I apologize and then send a unicorn emoji. He sends me a thumbs up. I delete our text thread from the app. I sit down at my desk and open my laptop. I pick up where I left off on Kaylee’s essay—“Millais dressed Ophelia in silver lace, garments more true to Shakespeare’s time, and did not dangle her above the water, as many painters did, but plunged her into it. By doing this, Ophelia had now become a ‘Fallen Woman’.”

I send it off to Kaylee, with several links to articles I’d read about the painting, encouraging her to read them. I crawl into bed and say the affirmation to myself over and over again: there must be value in this.

Sarah Brokamp's work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Lammergeier Magazine, and Rune Stone Journal. She received the Jerome Lowell DeJur Prize for Fiction and earned her M.F.A. from the City College of New York. She lives and works in Brooklyn.